


He's Fine.

by amanda_jolene



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 20:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1997160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amanda_jolene/pseuds/amanda_jolene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's fine. He thinks. Maybe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He's Fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Kester is so under appreciated.

No one ever asks Kester if he’s ok. 

There’s some sort of unspoken rule when you’re a therapist that no one asks you how you are or if you’re fairing ok or if you need to talk. Of course, there are the people who don’t adhere to rules and maybe they’ll ask you if you’re fine but their eyes tell you to lie and say fine because no one wants to believe that someone who goes to school to learn all the answers actually doesn’t have all the answers. They don’t want to believe the person who is supposed to glue people back together sometimes needs a little gluing themselves. 

I’m fine becomes his mantra. 

I’m fine. 

I’m fine. 

I’m fine with my wife leaving. I’m fine with sleeping on my brother’s couch. I’m fine with him drinking my milk. I’m fine with being alone. No, really, I’m fine being in an apartment by myself after 20 years of marriage. No, I’m fine. No, please, tell me your problems.

It becomes ingrained in his skull and he doesn’t realize it until one day when the waitress brings him his lunch and it’s an egg salad sandwich and he ordered chicken salad. She looks at him looking at his plate and says, “Is everything alright?” and without thinking, his head snaps up and his eyes are void and his smile is bleak and he says “I’m fine.” 

His whole life was shit, lunch might as well be, too. 

He can tell his coworkers disapprove of him. It’s in the way they shake their head when he wraps an arm a shaking, crying teenage boy during a doctor consult. It’s in the way they avoid him in the doctor’s lounge. It’s in the memo he receives anonymously about keeping a professional distance the day after Tix dies because he couldn’t hold in his tears long enough to make it to his office. 

The wife divorced him because he didn’t want children and he couldn’t explain why he didn’t until it was too late and then he was screaming the words at her as she packed his bags. The world chewed up children, abused them until they abused themselves, and he couldn’t morally bring someone into the world knowing the chance they had of being raped or beaten or abused. He just couldn’t. He wouldn’t and if she didn’t understand that then she was just as fucked up as the rest of those bastards that-

She was good at slamming doors in his face. 

He finds solace in the bottom of a shot glass at the bar. Rae said broken people didn’t need him to be professional and his coworkers said broken people needed him to be professional but no one ever asked Kester what the fuck he needed. He needed one day where he knew he was making a difference. He needed one day where he didn’t go home and want to smash his fucking head into a mirror because children should not be put through such misery. He just needed a day where things didn’t hurt.

And he needed just a moment away from memory of a tiny girl who sat on floors and counted calories and climbed stairs but never got anywhere. 

The thought sends his stomach lurching. In school they told them to prepare for the worst cases, to steel their hearts against the ones who were gone the moment they arrived because they would all arrive in ambulances, but some would leave with their parents and some would leave in a hearse and it was best to treat them all the same because the stark division would make you lose your mind if you thought about it too long. 

Kester wasn’t very good at following directions. 

And he was starting to lose his mind. 

He’s had a drink too many and some woman slides into the seat next to him and calls him handsome and he doesn’t manage a smile but she buys him another and asks “What do you do for a living?” 

The truth of the matter is, he doesn’t know what he does anymore. He’s not helping anyone and kids are still hurting and now they’re dying on him and the words bubble from his lips, “I break children.” 

Her fingers, once drawing on his arm, still. “Sorry?” 

“I’m fine.” 

In the morning he’s hung over and he stays away from the doctor lounge and he faces himself in the mirror and calmly asks his reflection, “Kester, how are you?” 

He says it again and again until his reflection is crying and he says, for the first time in a long time, “I’m not well.”


End file.
